TEGUCIGALPA: Less than two weeks after powerful storm Eta killed more than 200 people across Central America, authorities warned that Hurricane Iota was set to wallop coastal areas of Nicaragua and Honduras on Monday. As of 0300 GMT Sunday, Iota - the latest in an unusually busy storm season - was about 440 miles (705 kilometers) east-southeast of the Cabo Gracias a Dios on the Nicaragua-Honduras border, moving slowly westwards with maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour (120 kph).

Iota was upgraded to a hurricane early Sunday, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

"Reconnaissance aircraft finds Iota has strengthened into the thirteenth hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season," it tweeted. Iota is projected to hit the Colombian island of Providencia by late Sunday and is expected to rapidly strengthen into a major hurricane as it approaches Central America.

"It is likely that the heavy rainfall from Iota, through Thursday, will lead to life-threatening flash flooding and river flooding in parts of northern Colombia and Central America," the NHC warned. Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua announced evacuations Friday, even as the region was still reeling from the devastation inflicted by Eta.

Eta's heavy rains burst river banks and triggered landslides as far north as Chiapas, Mexico. The NHC warned that Iota would deposit as much as 16 inches (40 centimeters) of rain on Honduras, northern Nicaragua, eastern Guatemala and southern Belize, with isolated totals of up to 30 inches.